By James McCall
I found it rather strange when I read and heard in the local media that certain PAM candidates in the General Election of January 25, 2010, had publicly called for the resignation of party leader, Lindsay Grant. What was even stranger was that those who went public with that call were, just like Grant, unsuccessful in an election for the second time.
Just to remind you, PAM fielded a full slate of eight candidates. Of these, Shawn Richards and Eugene Hamilton were successful. Everyone else lost.
According to the reports I read and heard those who went public with the call for resignation were Glenroy Blanchette and Roy Fleming, each of whom, as was alluded to earlier, had contested elections a second time, having done it for the first time in 2004. The 2004 results were that Grant lost by a margin of 51; Fleming, by 557 and Blanchette, by 335. In this year’s election, Grant’s margin was 29; Fleming’s was 431 and Blanchette’s was 241.
The difference, however, is that, whereas Grant has exemplified his deeply-held belief that he was bilked out of his seat by taking the matter to court, no one else did. And maybe with good reason, because it is quite possible that some of the 13 rejected ballots were intended for Grant. In addition, some of the persons who voted in Constituency 4 may well have been expunged from the list had the objections that were raised some weeks prior to the election, been heard.
In light of the statistics, what really floored me when I heard/read the reports, was the fact that neither of these gentlemen seems to have given any consideration to the fact that there is, pending in the courts, a case that will examine whether or not Grant truly lost. Neither seems to have given any thought to even the remotest possibility that Lindsay Grant could win his petition and become an elected official or force a bye-election. I am not privy to their reasoning but this really bordered upon the ridiculous.
I am reminded of the story in the scripture in which our Lord addressed the subject of judging others. It is found in Matthew chapter 7 where we find Him saying: “1Judge not, that ye be not judged. 2For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. 3And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? 4Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? 5Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.”
In the outer world, the idea is that the leader of the party that loses two consecutive elections is expected to tender his resignation as leader. However, we do not hear of the other candidates who themselves lose consecutive elections, as is the case with Messrs. Blanchette and Fleming. Each has twice failed to carry his constituency and, in the normal run of things in the outer world, would have been asked to step aside to make room for others to try their hands at doing what these have failed at. This would be natural justice.
For some strange reason, I get the distinct feeling that these gentlemen would have proverbially shot themselves in the foot. By doing this, they have shown a serious lack of judgment and an unreasonableness that defies description. They would have come away smelling like roses had they given Grant a dose of his own medicine. The medicine I am referring to has to do with the fact that Grant had laid bare his financial status and dared the prime minister to follow suit. Had Fleming and Blanchette resigned on grounds that they would have lost two consecutive elections, they would have been in an infinitely better position to take the moral high ground and demand that Grant follow their lead.
I hate to say that I do not buy the recent reports that the party is stronger than ever. While we can all give voice to forgiveness, we are all plagued with the human frailty of being unable to forget. People of my age would remember the case in the late 1970s in which the former Premier, C A Paul Southwell went on the national broadcast media and reported to the nation, the difficulty he had been having with the younger members of his government. The name that came to the fore was that of the late Sir Lee L. Moore.
Moore was young and reportedly desperately needed to become premier. As such, he is said to have applied the pressure. When Mr. Southwell died in St. Lucia in 1979, Moore was there and, as a consequence, had to fend off the accusation that he had been responsible for the death. Such was the case that when the autopsy finally revealed that no foul play was involved, he proclaimed: “I know that before God and man, my hands are clean”, a statement that has oft been repeated in Kittitian circles.
Following this fiasco, Moore’s political fortunes took a nose dive because, in my humble opinion, the country never forgave him. Less than a year after he took office as premier, he lost the government to a PAM/NRP coalition. Four years later, in 1984, he lost his seat to Constance Mitcham. By 1989, as Washington “Washie” Archibald recalled quite recently, it was at Fitzroy Bryant’s home in St. Peters that Moore used Washie’s pen to write his resignation, having been ousted as party leader in favour of Denzil Douglas, the current Prime Minister.
This brings me back to Fleming and Blanchette. Whether or not they still have the requisite political capital and credibility remains to be seen. Neither can I say that their fortunes will plummet as Lee Moore’s did but, considering that we are dealing with the same people, on the same island, that is a distinct possibility.
The consolation that they can take from this situation is that neither stands where Mr. Moore stood in that neither of them holds a parliamentary seat or runs the country. However, if I stood in their shoes, I would have been seriously concerned because I would have tried to remove the mote from my brother’s eye while, at the same time, a beam was protruding from mine. That smacks of hypocrisy and the people know it. They will determine these guys’ political fortunes.
We’ll just wait!
